sold of this work, from which he would have to pay the expenses of printing a thin quarto: it thus happened that what was rather the least laborious of his two works was the most profitable. Mr. Arnot only survived the publication of his Criminal Trials about a twelvemonth. The asthma had ever since his fifteenth year been making rapid advances upon him, and his person was now reduced almost to a shadow. While still young, he carried all the marks of age, and accordingly the traditionary recollections of the historian of Edinburgh always point to a man in the extreme of life. Perhaps nothing could indicate more expressively the miserable state to which Mr. Arnot was reduced by this disease, than his own half-ludicrous, half-pathetic exclamation, on being annoyed by the bawling of a man selling sand on the streets: "The rascal!" cried the unfortunate invalid, "he spends as much breath in a minute as would serve me for a month!" Among the portraits and caricatures of the well-known John Kay may be found several faithful, though somewhat exaggerated, memorials of the emaciated person of Hugo Arnot. As a natural constitutional result of this disease, he was exceedingly nervous, and liable to be discomposed by the slightest annoyances: on the other hand, he possessed such ardour and intrepidity of mind, that in youth he once rode on a spirited horse to the end of the pier of Leith, while the waves were dashing over it and every beholder expected to see him washed immediately into the sea! On another occasion, having excited some hostility by a political pamphlet, and being summoned by an anonymous foe to appear at a particular hour in a lonely part of the King's Park, in order to fight, he went and waited four hours on the spot, thus perilling his life in what might have been the ambuscade of a deadly enemy. By means of the same fortitude of character he beheld the gradual approach of death with all the calmness of a Stoic philosopher. The magistrates of Leith had acknowledged some of his public services by the ominous compliment of a piece of ground in their churchyard; and it was the recreation of the last weeks of Mr. Arnot's life to go every day to observe the progress made by the workmen in preparing this place for his own reception. It is related that he even expressed considerable anxiety lest his demise should take place before the melancholy work should be completed. He died November 20th, 1786, when on the point of completing his thirty-seventh year; that age so fatal to men of genius that it may almost be styled their climacteric. He was interred in the tomb fitted up by himself at South Leith. Besides his historical and local works, he had published, in 1777, a fanciful metaphysical treatise, entitled Nothing, which was originally a paper read before a well-known debating-club styled the Speculative Society; being probably suggested to him by the poem of the Earl of Rochester on the equally impalpable subject of Silence. If any disagreeable reflection can rest on Mr. Arnot's memory for the free scope he has given to his mind in this little essay-a freedom sanctioned, if not excused, by the taste of the age-he must be held to have made all the amends in his power by the propriety of his deportment in later life; when he entered heartily and regularly into the observances of the Scottish Episcopal communion, to which he originally | belonged. If Mr. Arnot was anything decidedly in politics, he was a Jacobite, to which party he belonged by descent and by religion, and also perhaps by virtue of his own peculiar turn of mind. In modern politics he was quite independent, judging all men and all measures by no other standard than | their respective merits. In his professional character he was animated by a chivalrous sentiment of honour worthy of all admiration. He was so little of a casuist, that he would never undertake a case unless he were perfectly self-satisfied as to its justice and legality. He had often occasion to refuse employment which fell beneath his own standard of honesty, though it might have been profitable, and attended by not the slightest shade of disgrace. On a case being once brought before him, of the merits of which he had an exceedingly bad opinion, he said to the intending litigant, in a serious manner, "Pray, what do you suppose me to be?" "Why," answered the client, "I understand you to be a lawyer." "I thought, sir," said Arnot sternly, "you took me for a scoundrel." The litigant, though he perhaps thought that the major included the minor proposition, withdrew abashed. Mr. Arnot left eight children, all very young; and the talent of the family appears to have revived in a new generation, viz. in the person of his grandson, Dr. David Boswell Reid, whose Elements of Chemistry has taken its place amongst the most useful treatises on the science, and who was selected by government, on account of his practical skill, to plan and superintend the ventilation of the new houses of parliament, in the prosecution of which object he for several years conducted the most costly and prolonged, if not the most successful, experiment of the kind ever made. He AYTON, SIR ROBERT, an eminent poet at the court of James VI., was a younger son of Andrew Ayton of Kinaldie, in Fife, and was born in the year 1570. From the registers of St. Andrews university, it appears that he was incorporated or enrolled as a student in St. Leonard's College, December 3, 1584, and took his master's degree, after the usual course of study, in the year 1588. Subsequently to this, he resided for some time in France; whence, in 1603, he addressed an elegant panegyric in Latin verse to King James, on his accession to the crown of England, which was printed at Paris the same year; and this panegyric had no doubt some influence in securing to the author the favour of that monarch, by whom he was successively appointed one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and private secretary to his queen, Anne of Denmark, besides receiving the honour of knighthood. was, at a later period of his life, honoured with the appointment of secretary to Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. It is recorded on Ayton's funeral monument, as a distinction, that he had been sent to Germany as ambassador to the emperor, with a work published by King James, which is supposed to have been his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance. If this conjecture be correct, it must have been in 1609, when his majesty acknowledged a work published anonymously three years before, and inscribed it to all the crowned heads of Europe. During Ayton's residence abroad, as well as at the court of England, he lived in intimacy with and secured the esteem of the most eminent persons of the day. "He was acquainted," says Aubrey, "with all the wits of his time in England; he was a great acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, whom Mr. Hobbes told me he made use of, together with Ben Jonson, for an Aristarchus, when he made his epistle dedicatory for his translation of Thucydides." To this information we may add, as a proof of this respect on the part of Ben Jonson, that in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, he said, "Sir Robert Ayton loved him (Jonson) dearly." Sir Robert Ayton died at London, in March, 1637-8, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He lies buried in the south aisle of the choir of Westminster | Abbey, at the corner of King Henry V.'s Chapel, under a handsome monument of black marble, erected by his nephew, David Ayton of Kinaldie; having his bust in brass gilt, which has been preserved, while that of Henry, the hero of Agincourt (said to have been of a more precious metal), has long since disappeared. The following is a copy of the inscrip tion: M. S. ature of which country had afterwards considerable influence on the spirit of his own writings. On his return to Edinburgh he passed as a writer to the signet, but not finding this a congenial occupation, he turned to the Scottish bar, to which he obtained admission in 1840. As an advocate, however, he had little opportunity of being distinguished as an eloquent pleader, being chiefly employed as counsel in criminal cases. His fame was chiefly confined to the outer or parliament-house, where he was noted as one of the wits of the day, and an eminent member of that light-hearted talented party of lawyers who were the successors of the "stove school." But such talents as his could not be confined to impromptu sayings, and satisfied with the applause they created; and he produced for the principal magazines contributions, both in prose and verse, which indi Clarissimi omnigenaq. virtute et eruditione, præsertim Poesi ornatissimi equitis, Domini Roberti Aitoni, ex antiqua et illustri gente Aitona, ad Castrum Kinnadinum apud Scotos, oriundi, qui a Serenissimo R. Jacobo in Cubicula Interiora admissus, in Germaniam ad Imperatorem, Imperiiq. Principes cum libello Regio, Regiæ authoritatis vindice, Legatus, ac primum Annæ, demum Mariæ, serenissimis Britanniarum Reginis ab epistolis, consiliis et libellis supplicibus, nec non Xenodochio Su Catherinæ præfectus. Anima Creatoris reddita, hic depositis mortalibus exuviis secundum Redemp-cated a writer of no mean powers. While a contri toris adventum expectat. Carolum linquens, repetit Parentem Et valedicens Mariæ revisit Hoc devoti gratiq. animi Obiit Celebs in Regio Albaula Salut. Humanæ M.DCXXXVIII The poems of Sir Robert Ayton, for the first time published together in the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club (from which we derive these particulars of the poet's life), are few in number, but of great merit. He composed no Scottish poems, at least none that have come down to our times. He wrote in English, and was, indeed, one of the first of our countrymen who composed in that language with any degree of elegance or purity. It is unfortunate that the most of his poems are complimentary verses to the illustrious individuals with whom he was acquainted, and of course characterized only by a strain of conceited and extravagant flattery. Those, however, upon general topics, are conceived in a refined and tender strain of fancy, that reminds us more of the fairy strains of Herrick than anything else. John Aubrey remarks, "that Sir Robert was one of the best poets of his time," and adds the more important testimony that "Mr. John Dryden has seen verses of his, some of the best of that age, printed with some other verses.' According to Dempster, Ayton was also a writer of verses in Greek and French, as well as in English and Latin. Several of his Latin poems are preserved in the work called Delitia Poetarum Scotorum, which was printed in his lifetime (1637) at Amsterdam. AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE. This recent poet, essayist, popular lecturer, and professor, who in each attained to considerable distinction, was born in June, 1813. His father was a writer to the signet, and was descended from an old and respectable family in Fifeshire. The future professor was first educated at the Edinburgh Academy, where he was noted among his young compeers as an apt scholar; and afterwards at the university of Edinburgh, where he went through the usual curriculum. In this transit young Aytoun became the pupil of John Wilson, professor of moral philosophy, in whom he found a kindred spirit, and of whom he subsequently became the son-in-law and literary collaborateur; and in this class he distinguished himself at the early age of eighteen by his prize poem entitled Judith. After finishing his course at college, Aytoun completed his studies in Germany, the liter butor to Tait's Magazine, he also, in conjunction with his friend Theodore Martin, commenced the Bon Gualtier Ballads, the best collection of that kind of poetry extant. The literary talents of Aytoun, which were now generally recognized, obtained him, in 1839, a welcome admission among the contributors to Blackwood's Magazine; and in this distinguished periodical he soon found rivals to quicken his powers, as well as a sphere for their best exertions. It was there also that from time to time he published those stirring national odes which he afterwards gave to the world in a collective form, under the title of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. Like most young men of ardent feelings and literary acquirements, he at the commencement of life had entertained liberal sentiments in politics, which he afterwards saw fit to change; and this change, as is usually the case, was into a farther extreme on the opposite side than if he had been born and bred a Tory. The effects of this conversion are apparent in his Lays, where cavalierdevotedness in loyalty is as absolute as it is enthusiastic, and the conclusive unanswerable argument of which is, "Thus saith the king." Such Jacobitism, however, in the nineteenth century is so rare, and withal so harmless, that its extravagance may be pardoned on account of its singularity and its disinterestedness. But still more ardent than his Jacobitism was his enthusiastic Caledonian patriotism, that delighted to dwell upon the ancient remembrances of his country, and which made him conspicuous as the champion of a party that lived for a brief period, and whose great demand was the redress of Scottish grievances. But the poetic element of his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers is animated and inspired by either feeling, so that while The Heart of Bruce, and Edinburgh after Flodden, are lyrics ennobled by the purest national devotedness, his Burial March of Dundee, and Charles Edward at Versailles, are all the more poetical from the fervour of the Jacobite spirit by which they are characterized. But it was not merely by his poetry that Aytoun became one of the most distinguished writers in Blackwood. His essays, dissertations, and tales in that magazine were equally popular; and few of its mirth-inspiring stories can compete with his Glenmutchkin Railway, or How I became a Yeoman. How assiduously and exclusively his literary exertions were devoted to this one periodical may be understood from the fact that, between the year 1839, when he first appeared in its pages, until 1865, the year of his death, he contributed more than 120 articles upon a great diversity of subjects, but all of them distinguished by some particular excellence. While Aytoun was thus establishing a high literary reputation through a medium generally thought so 52 WILLIAM BALFOUR BAIKIE. 1853, married Miss Kinnear, a near relative of his friends, the Balfours of Trennabie, in Orkney. As yet in the prime of life, a large amount of happiness was thought to be still in store for him: but in the winter of 1864 he sickened, his constitution was gradually undermined, and he died on the 4th of August, 1865. WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE AYTOUN precarious and evanescent as that of magazine writing, the chair of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the university of Edinburgh became vacant, and to this professorship he was appointed in 1845. It was a great change in the literary life of one who had hitherto frolicked over the whole field of intellect, and regulated his choice of subjects by the mood of the passing hour. A systematic course of lectures was to be delivered; but this was not all-he must train young tyros to accurate thought and correct graceful composition, and bear with those blunders that set the teeth of a refined critic on edge. He must subject his pupils to daily oral examination, and revise their themes and essays pen in hand and with a patience all-enduring. But on the other hand, every department of his course was already familiar to his mind; in training the youthful intellect he could remember how his own had been matured; and while leading them by the same way, he could enjoy the luxury of living over again, and seeing himself reproduced anew in the pupils who walked in his steps. His assiduity, his patience, and his sympathy as a teacher, and the popularity and success with which they were crowned, very soon appeared. A chair which had hitherto been little regarded, became one of the most popular in the university; and his class-room, which at first comprised about thirty students, was at the close of his life attended by a hundred and fifty. The other particulars of Aytoun's life may be briefly enumerated. In 1849 he married Jane, the youngest daughter of Professor Wilson, who died ten years after. In 1852, on account of the services he had rendered as a writer to their party, Lord Derby and his friends acknowledged their obligation by appointing him sheriff and vice-admiral of Orkney and Shetland; and the duties of these offices he carefully fulfilled, spending for the purpose a considerable portion of each summer in these islands. After four years of widowhood, he, in December, During such varied activity of a literary life, and so prolific in its various productions, much that Mr. Aytoun wrote was upon subjects of political interest for the day, and therefore they have quietly dropped, or are dropping, out of notice. His tales, however, will always be appreciated as veritable pictures of human nature, and will show how high a place he would have occupied if he had devoted himself to this kind of literature. But it is as a poet that he will be best remembered, and his Lays and touching songs will be quoted when his political dissertations are forgot. While he lived, not the least of his literary distinctions arose from being supposed the editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and that in this office he succeeded his father-in-law, Professor John Wilson. But that both suppositions were entirely unfounded has been declared by official authority in the following intimation:-"It was erroneously sup posed in some quarters that Mr. Aytoun occupied the position of editor of this magazine. Indeed, it seems difficult to persuade our friends at a distance of what is well known to those nearer at hand, that the proprietors of this magazine have never, since its commencement, now nearly half a century ago, devolved upon others the powers or responsibilities of an editor. To this system, perhaps, they owe it that the magazine has preserved a uniform consistency of aim and purpose; and that, while warm in its advocacy of great views and principles, it has avoided those petty partizanships and predilections from which it is so difficult for an ordinary editor to keep free." "1 B. BAIKIE WILLIAM BALFOUR, M.D., R. N. The field of African exploration, although the most difficult and deadly, has always been the favourite choice of Scottish travellers. And whence this peculiarity? It perhaps arises from the national character, which only becomes more resolute from opposition, and which scorns to succumb as long as there are dangers to surmount or difficulties to be overcome. Although almost every new path of African discovery contains the grave of some unfortunate Scottish explorer who died mid-way, the lonely hillock only animates some successor to accomplish what the other has left undone, instead of compelling him to pause and turn back. Among these martyrs of African discovery, the list for the present terminates with the name of Dr. William Balfour Baikie. in 1855 that he was introduced to his proper voca tion, by being sent out on board the Pleiad steamer as an accredited envoy of the British government, for the purpose of opening up the trade of the Niger, forming a trading settlement in the interior of Africa, and thus bringing the various Niger expeditions to a practical conclusion. It was while thus employed that the iron steamer Day Spring was lost in going through some of the rapids of the river; but this disaster, instead of discouraging Dr. Baikie, only made him more active and self-reliant. Having saved all he could from the wreck, he took up his abode with the wild African tribes, and followed out his duties as a government commissioner by exploring the country in every direction, and entering into binding engagements with the African chiefs and their people in relation to their traffic with the British. But while thus employed as a pioneer of commerce and civilization, and collecting vocabuAfter an education at the grammar-laries of the native languages for the purpose of school of his native town, he went to Edinburgh, facilitating the intercourse of Europeans with the studied medicine, and highly distinguished himself natives, his supplies from home were exhausted, his in the medical classes of the university. Having horses died, and he soon found himself as bare and obtained the degree of M.D. he entered the royal helpless as the most impoverished of our African navy as assistant-surgeon in March 15, 1848, and in travellers. Yet still zealous to prosecute his work, this capacity served for some time in the Volage, a surveying vessel in the Mediterranean. But it was This lamented traveller was the son of Captain John Baikie, R. N., and was born at Kirkwall, Orkney, 1820. 1 Blackwood's Magazine for September, 1865. |